The Best of L Sprague De Camp Part 6

"That's Tec.u.mtha," said Staples pleasantly. He got into the truck and drove off.

He reached Chicago about ten, and at eleven asked to see Dr. Traphagen. The director's secretary looked at Staples queerly, but then, he was a queer-looking sight, with his pajama coat, Nively's pants-six inches too short-and his bedroom slippers.

The girl asked Staples if he had a card. He got out his wallet and gave her one. When she had disappeared into the inner office, Staples remembered that it was Nively's wallet and cards that he had.

Presently she came out and ushered him in. He said; "Good morning, Dr. Traphagen."

"Mr. Staples . . . ah . . . Nively. . . ah . . . just take it easy; everything's going to be all right."

"It's all right about the card; I can explain. But my name's really Staples, and I-"

"Just what is it you want, Mr. . . . ah. . . Staples?"

"Would you be interested in buying a mammoth?"

"Well, my dear sir, we're only interested in live animals. If you have a fossil, I think the Field Museum is the place to go."

"I didn't say it was a fossil. It's very much alive; a fine adult male of Parelephas jefiersonii. Wouldn't you like to take a look at it?"

"Certainly, certainly, my dear sir, I shall be glad to." Traphagen started out. As Staples walked through the door two keepers seized him. Traphagen barked at the girl: "Quick now, call the asylum, or hospital, or whatever it is!"

Staples wriggled, but the keepers had handled tougher game than a mere human being. "Listen, Dr. Traphagen," he said, "you can decide I'm a nut if you like. But I wish you'd take a look at the mammoth first. Did you ever hear of Dr. Gilmore Plattr'

"Tsk, tsk, my dear sir, first you say your name is Staples, then you produce a card with 'Nively' on it, and now you say you're Dr. Platt. Now just keep quiet. You're going to a nice place where you can play with all the mammoths you want"

Staples protested some more, but it got him nowhere. He was not a very articulate man, especially with his hat off, and he could make no headway against Traphagen's repeated injunctions to keep calm.

The ambulance arrived, and the men in white coats marched Staples out of the Administration Building and down the walk. Traphagen waddled behind. The truck was standing just in front of the ambulance. Staples yelled: "Tec.u.mtha!" The mammoth hoisted his trunk and trumpeted. The horrible bra.s.sy sound so startled the internes that they let go of Staples, but to their credit they grabbed their patient again before he could take action.

Traphagen ran over and looked under the canvas. He came back crying: "Oh, dear me! Oh, dear me! I'm so sorry! I'm so sorry! Come to think of it, I do know about Platt and his process. But I never thought you were really him-I mean from him. It's all a mistake, boys, it's all a mistake. He isn't crazy, after all."

The internes released Staples. In a tone of injured dignity, he said: "I've been trying for fifteen minutes to explain who I am, Dr. Traphagen, but you wouldn't let me."

Traphagen apologized some more, and said: "Now, I don't know if you still want to discuss the sale of that animal, my dear sir, but I'd be glad to. I'll have to look at our budget first, to see what our unexpended balance for the quarter is-"

I was really more amused than angry, though I didn't let Traphagen see that until we'd agreed on the price. He was so embarra.s.sed that he gave me a good one. A few dollars of it had to go to the Benefit Fund of the Carriesville police department, to square me with them.

Platt has hired some guards and had the place fenced properly. I don't think the Marco Polo outfit will try anything again. After all that publicity any 'accidents would look suspicious. Platt also hired another a.s.sistant, an enthusiastic young paleontologist named Roubideaux. They're in Wyoming now digging dinosaurs out of the Laramie Cretaceous beds.

We have some fine specimens in the cages, and more coming along in the tanks. One of the latter is a Mastodon america.n.u.s, already promised to the Bronx Zoological Park in New York.

But I started out to tell you why I wanted to leave Platt. In the first place, I'm a geologist, not a wild-animal keeper. The above gives you some idea of what working for Platt is like. In the second, I have, as I said, a family to support, and I want to keep my health. Last week I got a wire from Platt saying they'd found a complete Tyrannosaurus rex skeleton, fifty feet long and with a mouth full of six-inch teeth. I know what that means, and I think I'd better clear out while I'm still in one piece.

Best personal regards to you and Georgia. See you soon, I hope. Ken.

THE GNARLY MAN.

DR. MATILDA SADDLER first saw the gnarly man on the evening of June ~4th, 1g~6, at Coney Island. The spring meeting of the Eastern Section of the American Anthropological a.s.sociation had broken up, and Dr. Saddler had had dinner with two of her professional colleagues, Blue of Columbia and Jeffcott of Yale. She mentioned that she had never visited Coney and meant to go there that evening. She urged Blue and Jeff cott to come along, but they begged off.

Watching Dr. Saddler's retreating back, Blue of Columbia crackled: "The Wild Woman from Wichita. Wonder if she's hunting another husband?" He was a thin man with a small gray beard and a who-the-h.e.l.l-are-you-Sir expression.

"How many has she had?" asked Jeff cott of Yale.

"Three to date. Don't know why anthropologists lead the most disorderly private lives of any scientists. Must be that they study the customs and morals of all these different peoples, and ask themselves, 'If the Eskimos can do it why can't we?' I'm old enough to be safe, thank G.o.d."

"I'm not afraid of her," said Jeffcott. He was in his early forties and looked like a farmer uneasy in store-bought clothes. aI~m so very thoroughly married."

"Yeah? Ought to have been at Stanford a few years ago, when she was there. It wasn't safe to walk across the campus, with Tuthill chasing all the females and Saddler all the males."~

Dr. Saddler had to fight her way off the subway train, as the adolescents who infest the platform of the B.M.T.'s Stillwell Avenue Station are probably the worst-mannered people on earth, possibly excepting the Dobu Islanders of the Western Pacific. She didn't much mind. She was a tall, strongly built woman in her late thirties, who had been kept in trim by the outdoor rigors of her profession. Besides, some of the inane remarks in Swift's paper on occulturation among the Arapaho Indians had gotten her fighting blood up.

Walking down Surf Avenue toward Brighton Beach, she looked at the concessions without trying them, preferring to watch the human types that did and the other human types that took their money. She did try a shooting gallery, but found knocking tin owls off their perch with a .22 too easy to be much fun. Long-range work with an army rifle was her idea of shooting.

The concession next to the shooting gallery would have been called a sideshow if there had been a main show for it to be a sideshow to. The usual lurid banner proclaimed the uniqueness of the two-headed calf, the bearded woman, Arachne the spider-girl, and other marvels. The piece de resistance was Ungo-Bungo the ferocious ape-man, captured in the Congo at a cost of twenty-seven lives. The picture showed an enormous Ungo-Bungo squeezing a hapless Negro in each hand, while others sought to throw a net over him.

Although Dr. Saddler knew perfectly well that the ferocious apeman would turn out to be an ordinary Caucasian with false hair on his chest, a streak of whimsicality impelled her to go in. Perhaps, she thought, she could have some fun with her colleagues about it.

The spieler went through his leather-lunged harangue. Dr. Saddler guessed from his expression that his feet hurt. The tattooed lady didn't interest her, as her decorations obviously had no cultural significance, as they have among the Polynesians. As for the ancient Mayan, Dr. Saddler thought it in questionable taste to exhibit a poor microcephalic idiot that way. Professor Yogi's legerdemain and fireeating weren't bad.

A curtain hung in front of Ungo-Bungo's cage. At the appropriate moment there were growls and the sound of a length of chain being slapped against a metal plate. The spieler wound up on a high note: * . ladies and gentlemen, the one and only Ungo-Bungo!" The curtain dropped.

The ape-man was squatting at the back of his cage. He dropped his chain, got up, and shuffled forward. He grasped two of the bars and shook them. They were appropriately loose and rattled alarmingly. Ungo-Bungo snarled at the patrons, showing his even yellow teeth.

Dr. Saddler stared hard. This was something new in the ape-man line. Ungo-Bungo was about five feet three, but very ma.s.sive, with enormous hunched shoulders. Above and below his blue swimming trunks, thick grizzled hair covered him from crown to ankle. His short stout-muscled arms ended in big hands with thick gnarled fingers. His neck projected slightly forward, so that from the front he seemed to have but little neck at all.

His face- Well, thought Dr. Saddler, she knew all the living races of men, and all the types of freaks brought about by glandular maladjustment, and none of them had a face like that. It was deeply lined. The forehead between the short scalp hair and the brows on the huge supraorbital ridges receded sharply. The nose, though wide, was not apelike; it was a shortened version of the thick hooked Armenoid or "Jewish" nose. The face ended in a long upper lip and a retreating chin. And the yellowish skin apparently belonged to Ungo-Bungo.

The curtain was whisked up again.

Dr. Saddler went out with the others, but paid another dime, and soon was back inside. She paid no attention to the spieler, but got a good position in front of Ungo-Bungo's cage before the rest of the crowd arrived.

Ungo-Bungo repeated his performance with mechanical precision. Dr. Saddler noticed that he limped a little as he came forward to rattle the bars, and that the skin under his mat of hair bore several big whitish scars. The last joint of his left ring finger was missing. She noted certain things about the proportions of his s.h.i.+n and thigh, of his forearm and upper arm, and his big splay feet.

Dr. Saddler paid a third dime. An idea was knocking at her mind somewhere, trying to get in; either she was crazy or physical anthropology was haywire or-something. But she knew that if she did the sensible thing, which was to go home, the idea would plague her from now on.

After the third performance she spoke to the spieler. "I think your Mr. Ungo-Bungo used to be a friend of mine. Could you arrange for me to see him after he finishes?"

The spieler checked his sarcasm. His questioner was so obviously not a-not the sort of dame who asks to see guys after they finish.

"Oh, him," he said. "Calls himself Gaffney-Clarence Aloysius Gaff ney. That the guy you want?"

"Why, yes."

"Guess you can." He looked at his watch. "He's got four more turns to do before we close. I'll have to ask the boss." He popped through a curtain and called, "Hey, Morrie!" Then he was back. "It's okay. Morrie says you can wait in his office. Foist door to the right."

Morrie was stout, bald, and hospitable. "Sure, sure," he said, waving his cigar. "Glad to be of soivice, Miss Saddler. Chust a mm while I talk to Gaffney's manager." He stuck his head out. "Hey, Pappas! Lady wants to talk to your ape-man later. I meant lady. Okay." He returned to orate on the difficulties besetting the freak business. "You take this Gaffney, now. He's the best d.a.m.n ape-man in the business; all that hair really grows outa him. And the poor guy really has a face like that. But do people believe it? No! I hear 'em going out, saying about how the hair is pasted on, and the whole thing is a fake. It's mortifying." He c.o.c.ked his head, listening. "That rumble wasn't no rolly-coaster; it's gonna rain. Hope it's over by tomorrow. You wouldn't believe the way a rain can knock ya receipts off. If you drew a coive, it would be like this." He drew his finger horizontally through s.p.a.ce, jerking it down sharply to indicate the effect of rain. "But as I said, people don't appreciate what you try to do for 'em. It's not just the money; I think of myself as an ottist. A creative ottist. A show like this got to have balance and proportion, like any other ott . .

It must have been an hour later when a slow, deep voice at the door said, "Did somebody want to see me?"

The gnarly man was in the doorway. In street clothes, with the collar of his raincoat turned up and his hat brim pulled down, he looked more or less human, though the coat fitted his great sloping shoulders badly. He had a thick k.n.o.bby walking stick with a leather loop near the top end. A small dark man fidgeted behind him.

"Yeah," said Morrie, interrupting his lecture. "Clarence, this is Miss Saddler, Miss Saddler, this is our Mister Gaffney, one of our outstanding creative ottists."

"Pleased to meetcha," said the gnarly man. "This is my manager, Mr. Pappas."

Dr. Saddler explained, and said she'd like to talk to Mr. Gaffney if she might. She was tactful; you had to be to pry into the private affairs of Naga headhunters, for instance. The gnarly man said he'd be glad to have a cup of coffee with Miss Saddler; there was a place around the corner that they could reach without getting wet.

As they started out, Pappas followed, fidgeting more and more.

The gnarly man said, "Oh, go home to bed, John. Don't worry about me." He grinned at Dr. Saddler. The effect woul& have been unnerving to anyone but an anthropologist. "Every time he sees me talking to anybody, he thinks it's some other manager trying to steal me." He spoke General American, with a suggestion of Irish brogue in the lowering of the vowels in words like "man" and "talk." "I made the lawyer who drew up our contract fix it so it can be ended on short notice."

Pappas departed, still looking suspicious. The rain had practically ceased. The gnarly man stepped along smartly despite his limp. A woman pa.s.sed with a fox terrier on a leash. The dog sniffed in the direction of the gnarly man, and then to all appearances went crazy, yelping and slavering. The gnarly man s.h.i.+fted his grip on the ma.s.sive stick and said quietly, "Better hang on to him, ma'am." The woman departed hastily. "They just don't like me," commented Gaffney. "Dogs, that is."

They found a table and ordered their coffee. When the gnariy man took off his raincoat, Dr. Saddler became aware of a strong smell of cheap perfume. He got out a pipe with a big k.n.o.bbly bowl. It suited him, just as the walking stick did. Dr. Saddler noticed that the deep-sunk eyes under the beetling arches were light hazel.

"Well?" he said in his rumbling drawl.

She began her questions.

"My parents were Irish," he answered. "But I was born in South Boston-let's see-forty-six years ago. I can get you a copy of my birth certificate. Clarence Aloysius Gaffney, May 2, 1910." He seemed to get some secret amus.e.m.e.nt out of that statement.

"Were either of your parents of your somewhat unusual physical type?"

He paused before answering. He always did, it seemed. "Uh-huh. Both of 'em. Glands, I suppose."

"Were they both born in Ireland?"

"Yep. County Sligo." Again that mysterious twinkle.

She paused. "Mr. Gaffney, you wouldn't mind having some photographs and measurements made, would you? You could use the photographs in your business."

"Maybe." He took a sip. "Ouch! Gazooks, that's hot!"

"What?"

"I said the coffee's hot."

"I mean, before that."

The gnarly man looked a little embarra.s.sed. "Oh, you mean the ~gazooks'? Well, I-uh---once knew a man who used to say that."

"Mr. Gaffney, I'm a scientist, and I'm not trying to get anything out of you for my own sake. You can be frank with me."

There was something remote and impersonal in his stare that gave her a slight spinal chill. "Meaning that I haven't been so far?"

"Yes. When I saw you I decided that there was something extraordinary in your background. I still think there is. Now, if you think I'm crazy, say so and we'll drop the subject. But I want to get to the bottom of this."

He took his time about answering. "That would depend." There was another pause. Then he said, "With your connections, do you know any really first-cla.s.s surgeons?"

"But-yes, I know Dunbar."

"The guy who wears a purple gown when he operates? The guy who wrote a book on G.o.d, Man, and the Universe?"

"Yes. He's a good man, in spite of his theatrical mannerisms. Vhv? What would you want of him?"

"sot what youre thinking, I'm satis~ed with mv-uh-~-unusual physical type. But I have some old injuries-broken bones that didn't knit properly-that I want fixed up. He'd have to be a good man, though. I have a couple of thousand in the savings bank, but I know the sort of fees those guys charge. If you could make the necessary arrangements-"

"Why, yes, I'm sure I could. In fact I could guarantee it. Then I was right? And you'll-" She hesitated.

"Come clean? Uh-huh. But remember, I can still prove I'm Clarence Aloysius if I have to."

"Who are you, then?"

Again there was a long pause. Then the gnarly man said, "Might as well tell you. As soon as you repeat any of it, you'll have put your professional reputation in my hands, remember.

"First off, I wasn't born in Ma.s.sachusetts. I was born on the upper Rhine, near Mommenheim, and as nearly as I can figure out, about the year ~o,ooo B.C."

Dr. Saddler wondered whether she'd stumbled on the biggest thing in anthropology or whether this bizarre man was making Baron Munchausen look like a piker.

I-Ic seemed to cuess her thoo~ht~~. 1 can't orov~ tln~t. of course, But so long as you arrange about that operation, I don't care whether you believe me or not."

"But-but-how?"

"I think the lightning did it. We were out trying to drive some bison into a pit. Well, this big thunderstorm came up, and the bison bolted in the wrong direction. So we gave up and tried to find shelter. And the next thing I knew I was lying on the ground with the rain running over me, and the rest of the clan standing around wailing about what had they done to get the storm-G.o.d sore at them, so he made a bull's-eye on one of their best hunters. They'd never said that about me before. It's funny how you're never appreciated while you're alive.

"But I was alive, all right. My nerves were pretty well shot for a few weeks, but otherwise I was all right except for some burns on the soles of my feet. I don't know just what happened, except I was reading a couple of nears ago that scientists had located the machinery that controls the replacement of tissue in the medulla ohiongata. I think mavhc the lightning did something to my medulla to speed it An'. ~va~ I never cot ~in older aftcr that. Physic~U~, that is~ And except for those broken bones I told you about. I was thirty-three at the time, more or less. We didn't keep track of ages. I look older now, because the lines in your face are bound to get sort of set after a few thousand years, and because our hair was always gray at the ends. But I can still tie an ordinary h.o.m.o sapiens in a knot if I want to."

"Then you're-you mean to say you're-you're trying to tell me you're-" - "A Neanderthal man? h.o.m.o neanderthalensis? That's right"

Matilda Saddler's hotel room was a bit crowded, with the gnarly man, the frosty Blue, the rustic Jeffcott, Dr. Saddler herself, and Harold McGannon the historian. This McGannon was a small man, very neat and pink-skinned. He looked more like a New York Central director than a professor. Just now his expression was one of fascination. Dr. Saddler looked full of pride; Professor Jeffcott looked interested but puzzled; Dr. Blue looked bored. (He hadn't wanted to come in the first place.) The gnarly man, stretched out in the most comfortable LhaiL and puffinc hic ever~rovu pipe. ~ecmed to bc ening tiirnerl~.

McGannon was asking a question. "Well, Mr.-.-Gaffney? I suppose that's your name as much as any."

"You might say so," said the gnarly man. "My original name was something like s.h.i.+ning Hawk. But I've gone under hundreds of names since then. If you register in a hotel as 's.h.i.+ning Hawk' it's apt to attract attention. And I try to avoid that."

"Why?" asked MeGannon.

The gnarly man looked at his audience as one might look at willfully stupid children. "I don't like trouble. The best way to keep out of trouble is not to attract attention. That's why I have to pull up stakes and move every ten or fifteen years. People might get curious as to why I never got any older."